6 ms·

Mystery Cable Activated in Cuba

93 points by hazov 14y ago

stephengillie 14y ago
The cable isn't a mystery, the article states, but its fate was. Also, the cable's not in Cuba -- It was laid in 2007 between Cuba and Venezuela. They just activated this undersea internet link, and the real mystery is 'how's it misconfigured?' Slightly misleading title.
- josh2600 14y ago
  Sorry, I can't tell if you're being facetious. The article implies that the cubans are, for some reason, receiving packets over fiber, but sending over satellite, which, for all intents and purposes, is insane. It is a real mystery as to why anyone would configure a network to operate in this manner. It is akin to having a 10gigabit fiber line in your office and choosing to have all outbound traffic routed over a 1.5megabit DSL line instead. Madness!
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - benologist 14y ago
    The Internet in Cuba is characterized by a low number of connections, limited bandwidth, censorship, and high cost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba Madness is exactly the word the Castros were aiming for.
  - stephengillie 14y ago
    Yes, that configuration is madness, but it's no mystery. The mystery is why is that configuration in use? The answer probably has to do with reducing internet usage in Cuba to prevent a Cuban Spring. And that really isn't about the cable either.
    - dsl 14y ago
      The most likely explanation is that traffic is bi-directional on the fiber line, but a lot of additional latency is introduced by software based (as opposed to hardware accelerated) deep packet inspection.
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    It's more like having a 10gigabit fiber line and choosing to have outbound traffic routed via carrier pigeon. It's latency, not bandwidth, that makes a satellite connection maddening.
    - bibinou 14y ago
      also, cost. Sending to a satellite is much more involved than receiving from it.
      - rdl 14y ago
        Not once you get to the size of circuit here, and in general, receiving from satellite is far cheaper than sending to it.
  - drzaiusapelord 14y ago
    Because its a corrupt and incompetent regime that relies on censorship? Maybe all their filtering toys currently only work with the sat uplinks. Who knows. Non-free countries have crazy networking to remain non-free. wikipedia: Cuba has an Internet penetration of 1 to 3 percent; making it the lowest rate in Latin America and one of the lowest in the world /this is a feature not a bug.
rplacd 14y ago
> Note: Round trip latencies for crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are approximately 60ms and 110ms, respectively. Damn - just out of the reach of my intution.
p_monk 14y ago
About a year ago, the young people in Cuba already knew that the cable was laid, but were already very skeptical that it would ever be in operation. It's disheartening to read that they were right, for now. A number of positive changes have taken place in Cuba over the last couple years, but none that might be as consequential as offering low-cost internet. I believe that the government overestimates the "danger" in this -- the people just want to use facebook on their phones.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- rafaelm 14y ago
  Remember what Facebook and Twitter means for these authoritarian regimes.It's the possibility for their people to voice their opinions and learn more about what's happening beyond their borders. This cable was laid between Venezuela and Cuba in 2007. There was an attempt about a couple of years ago to block certain websites here in Venezuela that were deemed dangerous by the government. The reaction from the people over twitter and FB prevented it. I've always been worried that the venezuelan govt will follow the lessons from their cuban and chinese mentors.
  - ipince 14y ago
    Hi Rafael! Assuming you're Venezuelan, you're the only one (beside myself) that I've seen in hacker news. I'd be interested in chatting about what you're doing and your view of Venezuela's situation. Please email me (find email in profile). Cheers!
- buster 14y ago
  That made me laugh. Seriously. Have you ever been in Cuba? I was there last summer. Most people don't even have a mobile phone, let alone a smartphone. Public phones are extremely common. Most likely many people never even heard of facebook or twitter. The last family i lived for a week got internet access from a friend who got those coupons. So, from what i was told, basically people that need to have access to the internet at work get a sort of coupons for some hours of internet usage and there of course there's something like a black market for it. Anyway, i don't think peoplein Cuba miss Facebook. They'd probably be more then happy to have mobile phones in general and a good mobile/GPRS coverage for now. In general, internet is so extremely slow over there that it feels like the whole country is on an analog line from Fidels office.
trotsky 14y ago
This sounds like a counter-surveillance technique. If you're an island nation with one cable for all your traffic you are very susceptible to a variety of state actor attacks: traffic analysis, mitm, protocol downgrades etc. If your traffic goes out one way and back in via a totally divergent link these kinds of techniques become significantly harder to pull off and much easier to detect their use. Passive undersea fiber monitoring is well within the means of more than a few intelligence operations and quite popular. They're in international water, unguarded, unrealistic to regularly inspect and they can be modified to leak just enough light to see every bit while being pretty difficult to detect. A cable strung between Venezuela and Cuba would be impossible to resist for anyone in the region with a highly advanced signals intelligence program and spent 40+ years defined by communism/socialism as public enemy number one. A year delay in lighting at all suggests to me very strongly that they had direct evidence or strong indicators that their cable had been split/bent or their DWDM repeaters / inline terminals or other equipment came into question - most of it is made by companies pretty cozy with large state actors. After traffic snooping your second big intelligence concern these days is data exfiltration. The classic radio bug is way more trouble and effort than malware mics & cams, keyloggers and mobile phones. Even more popular is just files - grab it all and see whats good. Mostly that's very hard to catch leaving the country because there are so many paths and the data volume is so large. But if you've previously built a monitoring system for your only route out, and it's slow enough you can do a credible job of traffic analysis then you're probably loathe to give up on it. In comparison, the kind of gear needed to do DPI, anomaly detection, key weakening etc. at a 100G+ is very pricey and probably covered by export bans anyway. Asymmetric internet works pretty well anyway. Most commercial service is tuned that way because thats what the use looks like, way more in than out. Sat latency ain't a ball of joy but for bulk data and web pages it's probably pretty decent service especially when compared to what it's replacing.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Wouldn't this scale to multiple links? Bug one, then blow the others up. "Oops, that cruise ship had a C4-infused anchor and it hit your cable, sorry." I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often, actually.
- Element_ 14y ago

93 points by hazov 14y ago

The cable isn't a mystery, the article states, but its fate was. Also, the cable's not in Cuba -- It was laid in 2007 between Cuba and Venezuela. They just activated this undersea internet link, and the real mystery is 'how's it misconfigured?' Slightly misleading title.

josh2600 14y ago
Sorry, I can't tell if you're being facetious. The article implies that the cubans are, for some reason, receiving packets over fiber, but sending over satellite, which, for all intents and purposes, is insane. It is a real mystery as to why anyone would configure a network to operate in this manner. It is akin to having a 10gigabit fiber line in your office and choosing to have all outbound traffic routed over a 1.5megabit DSL line instead. Madness!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- benologist 14y ago
  The Internet in Cuba is characterized by a low number of connections, limited bandwidth, censorship, and high cost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba Madness is exactly the word the Castros were aiming for.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  Yes, that configuration is madness, but it's no mystery. The mystery is why is that configuration in use? The answer probably has to do with reducing internet usage in Cuba to prevent a Cuban Spring. And that really isn't about the cable either.
  - dsl 14y ago
    The most likely explanation is that traffic is bi-directional on the fiber line, but a lot of additional latency is introduced by software based (as opposed to hardware accelerated) deep packet inspection.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  It's more like having a 10gigabit fiber line and choosing to have outbound traffic routed via carrier pigeon. It's latency, not bandwidth, that makes a satellite connection maddening.
  - bibinou 14y ago
    also, cost. Sending to a satellite is much more involved than receiving from it.
    - rdl 14y ago
      Not once you get to the size of circuit here, and in general, receiving from satellite is far cheaper than sending to it.
- drzaiusapelord 14y ago
  Because its a corrupt and incompetent regime that relies on censorship? Maybe all their filtering toys currently only work with the sat uplinks. Who knows. Non-free countries have crazy networking to remain non-free. wikipedia: Cuba has an Internet penetration of 1 to 3 percent; making it the lowest rate in Latin America and one of the lowest in the world /this is a feature not a bug.

rplacd 14y ago

> Note: Round trip latencies for crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are approximately 60ms and 110ms, respectively. Damn - just out of the reach of my intution.

p_monk 14y ago

About a year ago, the young people in Cuba already knew that the cable was laid, but were already very skeptical that it would ever be in operation. It's disheartening to read that they were right, for now. A number of positive changes have taken place in Cuba over the last couple years, but none that might be as consequential as offering low-cost internet. I believe that the government overestimates the "danger" in this -- the people just want to use facebook on their phones.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rafaelm 14y ago
Remember what Facebook and Twitter means for these authoritarian regimes.It's the possibility for their people to voice their opinions and learn more about what's happening beyond their borders. This cable was laid between Venezuela and Cuba in 2007. There was an attempt about a couple of years ago to block certain websites here in Venezuela that were deemed dangerous by the government. The reaction from the people over twitter and FB prevented it. I've always been worried that the venezuelan govt will follow the lessons from their cuban and chinese mentors.
- ipince 14y ago
  Hi Rafael! Assuming you're Venezuelan, you're the only one (beside myself) that I've seen in hacker news. I'd be interested in chatting about what you're doing and your view of Venezuela's situation. Please email me (find email in profile). Cheers!
buster 14y ago
That made me laugh. Seriously. Have you ever been in Cuba? I was there last summer. Most people don't even have a mobile phone, let alone a smartphone. Public phones are extremely common. Most likely many people never even heard of facebook or twitter. The last family i lived for a week got internet access from a friend who got those coupons. So, from what i was told, basically people that need to have access to the internet at work get a sort of coupons for some hours of internet usage and there of course there's something like a black market for it. Anyway, i don't think peoplein Cuba miss Facebook. They'd probably be more then happy to have mobile phones in general and a good mobile/GPRS coverage for now. In general, internet is so extremely slow over there that it feels like the whole country is on an analog line from Fidels office.

trotsky 14y ago

This sounds like a counter-surveillance technique. If you're an island nation with one cable for all your traffic you are very susceptible to a variety of state actor attacks: traffic analysis, mitm, protocol downgrades etc. If your traffic goes out one way and back in via a totally divergent link these kinds of techniques become significantly harder to pull off and much easier to detect their use. Passive undersea fiber monitoring is well within the means of more than a few intelligence operations and quite popular. They're in international water, unguarded, unrealistic to regularly inspect and they can be modified to leak just enough light to see every bit while being pretty difficult to detect. A cable strung between Venezuela and Cuba would be impossible to resist for anyone in the region with a highly advanced signals intelligence program and spent 40+ years defined by communism/socialism as public enemy number one. A year delay in lighting at all suggests to me very strongly that they had direct evidence or strong indicators that their cable had been split/bent or their DWDM repeaters / inline terminals or other equipment came into question - most of it is made by companies pretty cozy with large state actors. After traffic snooping your second big intelligence concern these days is data exfiltration. The classic radio bug is way more trouble and effort than malware mics & cams, keyloggers and mobile phones. Even more popular is just files - grab it all and see whats good. Mostly that's very hard to catch leaving the country because there are so many paths and the data volume is so large. But if you've previously built a monitoring system for your only route out, and it's slow enough you can do a credible job of traffic analysis then you're probably loathe to give up on it. In comparison, the kind of gear needed to do DPI, anomaly detection, key weakening etc. at a 100G+ is very pricey and probably covered by export bans anyway. Asymmetric internet works pretty well anyway. Most commercial service is tuned that way because thats what the use looks like, way more in than out. Sat latency ain't a ball of joy but for bulk data and web pages it's probably pretty decent service especially when compared to what it's replacing.

jrockway 14y ago
Wouldn't this scale to multiple links? Bug one, then blow the others up. "Oops, that cruise ship had a C4-infused anchor and it hit your cable, sorry." I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often, actually.
Element_ 14y ago